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Committee: Trump, Allies Schemed to Overturn 2020 Election; 170+ Million People Facing Frigid Temperatures Across U.S.; Putin Utters Word 'War' in Reference to Ukraine; China Changes Its COVID Counting Method. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired December 23, 2022 - 00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm John Vause.

[00:01:09]

Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM. Just one man. Without Donald Trump, there would be no January 6th. The final report from the January 6th Select Committee lays out the case against the former president.

Just in time for holiday travel, a cyclone bomb is bearing down on much of the U.S.

And was a slip of the tongue or a change in foreign policy? For the first time, Vladimir Putin uses the "W" word, as in "war," in Ukraine.

ANNOUNCER: Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with John Vause.

VAUSE: An 18-month investigation, thousands of interviews, documents, emails, phone records, and the House Committee Investigating January 6th has finally released its full report.

It is 845 pages long, with the main conclusion that Donald Trump and his allies took part in a number of schemes to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The report makes 11 recommendations, including one aimed squarely at Trump. It says anyone who incites an insurrection should be disqualified and barred from holding public office.

The report also urges Congress to codify that no vice president or other official can ever overthrow electors chosen by individual states. That's exactly what Trump wanted his vice president, Mike Pence, to do.

Let's bring in CNN justice correspondent Jessica Schneider, live in Washington at this late hour. There is so much in this report, but what is the big takeaway?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: There is, John. The big takeaway is, that it's finally out, and they have specific recommendations about how various agencies and even Congress should move forward. Of course, we are nearly two years after the January 6th attack on the Capitol. And now, finally, the committee tasked with investigating all aspects of that attack, they have finally released its report.

It does come after a slight delay of nearly two days. We expected the committee to release their report on Wednesday. Here we are on Thursday night. They didn't really say immediately because of typographical errors and some printing issues. But it is nearly 900 pages.

It encompasses a comprehensive narrative of what occurred before, during, and immediately after January 6th. But like I said, most importantly, it does lay out these 11 specific recommendations from the committee about how various agencies and even Congress can move forward.

You mentioned it right off the top: the committee is pointing out a section of the Constitution, the 14th Amendment, Section 3, that clearly states that anyone who is engaged in an insurrection should be and can be disqualified from holding office.

So the committee is saying here that that constitutional provision should be enforced, and they're not saying it directly. But the takeaway here is that they believe Donald Trump should be barred from holding office again, especially now that he has announced his run for 2024.

So in addition to that recommendation, the committee is also pushing for the passage of what's known as the Presidential Election Reform Act. That would make clear that vice presidents don't have this power to overturn elections. Of course, Trump believed it did, and he pressured Pence to overturn the election, which Pence obviously never do -- never did.

The committee here also recommending that federal intelligence and security agencies really take a closer look at the dangers of violent extremism. You know, we've seen in recent weeks, in fact, members of the Oath Keepers, convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Now at trial, members of the Proud Boys. They were at the forefront of the Capitol attack, members of these two extremist groups.

Plus, there are a litany of new details in here about what transpired around January 6th: efforts to overturn the election.

And, John, very interestingly, the committee also touches on this fake elector plot. They pinpoint a little known Trump attorney that really came up with this idea that fake electors in battleground states could be mobilized to come together and try to lobby to become the real electors and to try to declare a victory for Trump.

[00:05:09]

Of course, that never actually happened, but it was a fraudulent plot that now local state prosecutors are investigating, as well as the special counsel here. And, John, that is the next step here. The committee has wrapped up.

Its report has been submitted. It will essentially dissolve once we hit January, because the Republicans will take over.

But all of these investigations, these prosecutors at the state level, particularly in Georgia, also the special counsel's office, they are moving forward on their continued criminal investigations.

And the big question here, John, is whether the former president could be indicted for any number of crimes, including the fact that this committee specifically referred him for four crimes to the Justice Department.

So a lot remains to be seen as to how, even after this report, how things unfold when it comes to the criminal angle here, John.

Yes, there's a lot to get through here. Jessica, thank you. Appreciate you staying up.

SCHNEIDER: Thank you.

VAUSE: Ron Brownstein is CNN's senior political analyst and the senior editor for "The Atlantic." He is with us this hour from Los Angeles. Ron, thanks for staying up, as well.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Thank you.

VAUSE: OK. So the bottom line from the committee, without Donald Trump, January 6th would have just been another day. The report says there is evidence of "a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election. That evidence has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion the central cause of January six was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him."

You know, it was surprising to read the number of moving parts this plan had, and the amount of time and planning that went into it all.

BROWNSTEIN: In many ways, that has been the great contribution of this committee from the start.

I mean, you know, on the -- in the chaos and horror of that day, in the immediate aftermath, there was a tendency to say, well, to think that what happened is a flash of pique or frustration of the president, an impulsive action of him pointing his, you know, supporters towards the Capitol.

In fact, what the committee has made clear is that it was the final step in a multi-pronged, multi-month effort to overturn the election that ultimately enlisted collaboration from a large number of other Republican elected officials, both in Congress, and especially in the states.

It is true that none of this would have happened without Donald Trump, as the committee says. But the other clause that you read is also important. It could -- he could not have done this alone. And, I think what you see in this report, in some ways, are only the glimmers of the breadth of collaboration that he was able to inspire.

VAUSE: Well, that's the question, because many members of the Republican Party were eager and willing to help Donald Trump, in the days after January 6th. They're still around. I mean, does the Republican Party, does the GOP get a pass?

BROWNSTEIN: Right. Look, you know, what the committee did, clearly, was make an unbelievably comprehensive case that Donald Trump violated his oath of office, and in fact, may have violated the law, as well.

And in particular, in that early chapter on the big lie, chapter two, they show over and again how he was told clearly and unequivocally -- not only by the Justice Department, but by his own campaign -- that what he was saying about the election wasn't true, that there was not the evidence of fraud; for example, with Dominion Voter Systems.

And later, the report makes very clear that the plan that he urged on Mike Pence to simply ignore the results, he was told that that violated the Electoral Count Act. He knew that at the time that he did this. That's obviously very important from a legal point of view.

If there's any criticism of this report, is that it zooms in so tightly on Trump and his circle, and their culpability that is sort of crops out the picture those other Republicans in the states, and in Congress.

For example, in its dealing with the fake electors, it really bends over backwards to argue that they were, in effect, duped, in many cases, by the Trump campaign, and the Trump White House.

Obviously, there are investigations going on in the states, and through the special counsel about whether that is, in fact, the case.

VAUSE: The report says there is evidence that, from election day in November to January 6th and the storming of the Capitol, Trump or those within his inner circle "engaged in at least 200 apparent acts of public or private outreach, pressure, or condemnation targeting either state legislators, or state or local election administrators to overturn state election results."

It seems there is more and more evidence each day that, you know, this is sort of like a mob rule, or mob tactics being used by -- by the Trump administration. The sort of muscling of local officials to overturn the results, as well as what we're hearing from Cassidy Hutchinson, that she had a lawyer paid for by the Trump allies. She didn't know that at the time. And he wanted her to protect the boss, to just don't recall everything.

[00:10:08]

BROWNSTEIN: Staggering details. I mean, that number jumped out at me, as well. And obviously, there were many local officials, predominantly Republicans in these states, who resisted that pressure from Trump. There were others who went along with it and participated in the fake electors scheme. One thing that really struck me was a memo from a White House official

that I had not seen previously disclosed, that was included in the final report, in which this official argues that they don't even need evidence of fraud for state legislatures to overturn the votes in their states, and instead, award the Electoral College votes to Donald Trump. That the threat of socialism from Joe Biden -- Joe Biden -- was sufficient to justify overturning the vote of the people in their state.

And that really goes to this larger question, because this is the argument that so much of conservative media, that Trump, indeed other Republican elected officials had been feeding their base for years, that any Democratic win would so transform and deform the country, would uproot it from what it has been for over two centuries, that essentially, any means necessary are justified to prevent that.

You know, it's been summarized as the Flight 93 argument.

And the question, I think, the big question that the committee -- one question they did not grapple with is, even if you deal with Trump, even if you politically marginalize him or indict and convict him, is that virus contained inside of the broader conservative movement? And certainly, in the -- among the extremist groups that they -- that they explore here in this -- in the summary (ph).

VAUSE: Very, very quickly, we've been looking at opinions polls all day long of how many people are being moved, convinced of -- you know, by this committee and the -- you know, the amount of information they put out over the last 18 months.

Do you think that Trump base is impacted in any way by this report?

BROWNSTEIN: I don't know if they're impacted by this. I mean, certainly, they're kind of being eroded by -- by the signs of his electoral failures in 2022.

But, you know, someone made the point to me that that really shouldn't be considered the metric. One -- someone who works at one of the groups that study democracy, they pointed out that in the past, in episodes like this, there's been an elite reaction that says we should not look back. We can't have one administration judge the actions of a previous administration's as criminal. That was the argument Gerald Ford used when he pardoned Richard Nixon.

It was the argument Barack Obama used in 2009 when he chose not to prosecute torture under the Bush administration.

We're not hearing that argument. You're not hearing that except from the die-hard Trump loyalists. In fact, you're hearing the opposite argument: of failing to hold -- establish accountability is the real danger to society. You know, the saying that a coup without consequence is practice.

VAUSE: Practice.

BROWNSTEIN: I think there is the committee's success. They have really made the point, I think very strongly that we cannot simply turn the page, and refuse to face up to the magnitude of what happened on January 6th and in the months leading up to it.

VAUSE: Ron, as always, so good to have you with us. We really appreciate your time and your insights. Thank you, sir.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.

VAUSE: Well, a monster winter storm is bearing down right now in much of the United States. Dangerous frigid temperatures, bitterly cold winds, and snow and ice making for treacherous travel conditions just ahead of the Christmas holidays.

More than half of the population, about 170 million people, now under wind-chill and wet -- winter weather alerts. Airlines have already canceled more than 2,000 flights scheduled for Friday after canceling a similar number just the day before.

Let's go now to CNN meteorologist Britley Ritz. Yes, so this is a big one, right? It's everywhere.

BRITLEY RITZ, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Everywhere. And you know, the temperatures are not very pleasant. In fact, they can become deadly if we're not taking care of ourselves.

Let's look at this. It's in Fahrenheit, by the way. That's nine below in Pierre. North Platte, seven below. Five below in St. Louis. It's all moving in on the Ohio Valley.

But here's the kicker. You factor in the winds. So the "feels like" temperature is what's important here. So even though it's 11 below -- that's the actual temperature in Minneapolis -- it feels like 33 below.

So we're talking about the wind-chill alerts. We have wind-chill warnings from Montana all the way down into Texas, back on through the mid-Atlantic. And wind-chill advisories all across the Deep South and up parts of the Eastern Seaboard, as this whole cold front presses eastwards.

Now, behind it, it gets windy. And we can factor in that wind. And of course, that arctic blast feels much colder. So we have wind alerts, wind advisories from Texas, up the Eastern Seaboard into New England, and high-wind warnings for parts of New England down into parts of the Appalachian mountains.

And that's where we get wind gusts over 60 miles per hour. Factor that in with temperatures that are already below zero, it feels like 35 to 45 below. And when that happens, you get -- you get frostbite rather, within about 5 to 10 minutes. So it doesn't take much.

My best advice to you is stay indoors and avoid it altogether if you can.

[00:15:07] Here's your forecast for wind chills. Minneapolis expected to feel like 29 below on Friday; 34 below in Chicago, and there's the snow. To put everything together, that area of low pressure brings in snowfall through the Ohio Valley, up into the Great Lakes.

Some of the heaviest snowfall now and especially across the Great Lakes as that cold air works its way over the warmer waters of the Great Lakes, and we get that lake-enhanced. And we factor in the winds with the snow that may not be falling all that hard, but it continues to cause whiteout conditions. Hence, the blizzard warnings all across the Northern Plains and across the Great Lakes.

VAUSE: Wow.

RITZ: Yes.

VAUSE: Britley, a busy night for you.

RITZ: Absolutely.

VAUSE: Thank you. Take care, see you soon.

One little word that could make a big difference. When we come back, Vladimir Putin uses the "war" word, as in war in Ukraine. And we'll explain why that is a big deal.

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VAUSE: Three-letter word, "war," it's a big deal when it comes to how Russia describes its invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin has insisted on calling it a special military operation. Calling it a war inside Russia is punishable with jail time.

Now, listen to President Putin at a press conference on Thursday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Our goal is not to spin the flywheel of military conflict but, on the contrary, to end this war. We have been and will continue to strive for this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[00:20:0]

VAUSE: But one U.S. official cautions to not read too much into it, saying he believes it may have been a slip of the tongue.

Meanwhile, we're waiting for confirmation that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is back home after a visit to the United States on Wednesday. He addressed U.S. lawmakers and secured a new batch of U.S. weapons including the Patriot missile defense system. He later said his military is getting the equipment it needs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): The victory will be ours. Glory to every warrior of ours. Glory to everyone who protects our country. We bring to Ukraine, to Donbas, to Bakhmut, and to the South decisions which our defense forces awaited.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: And Ukrainian troops on the front lines Thursday agree with that, saying the more heavy weapons they have, the sooner they'll win.

Jill Dougherty is a CNN contributor, as well as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She's also CNN's former Moscow bureau chief and has spent decades reporting on and from Russia.

Jill, it's good to see you.

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Hey, John.

VAUSE: OK. So for more than 300 days, the Kremlin has described the invasion of Ukraine as a special military operation. Anyone calling it a war in Russia faces jail time, and hundreds are in jail for doing just that.

So was this just a slip of the tongue by Putin, or is there more to it?

DOUGHERTY: You know, I was really, I can tell you, shocked when I saw that. Because, I mean, people are in prison because of using that very word.

And it's really, you know, just something that could never, ever happen, and then all of a sudden, President Putin uses the word, I think, twice in public.

So, what does it mean? I mean, OK, it could be a slip of the tongue. Or another idea could be that the rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin has changed a bit, and now they are talking about the kind of -- you know, the end of an operation to pacify Ukraine, and now it's really an existential war against the world and against, I should say, NATO and the West.

And so I think when you get to that point, it feels a little bit counterintuitive to just say, Well, it's still a special military operation. But who knows? I mean, we'd have to ask President Putin, wouldn't we?

VAUSE: Well, yes. He's difficult to get to these days, apparently.

DOUGHERTY: Yes.

VAUSE: He used the "war" word, in one context, of wanting an end to the war in Ukraine. Here's a little more from the Russian president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PUTIN (through translator): This leadership of Ukraine forbade itself to negotiate. Sooner or later, of course, any parties in the state of conflict will sit down and negotiate. The sooner this realization comes to those who oppose us, the better. We never gave up on it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: For the record, the Ukrainians broke off talks because of the ongoing Russian war crimes inside Ukraine, but is this an olive branch from Putin, or part of a, you know, a Russian scheme that Zelenskyy actually warned about, where the Russians try to create this impression they want peace; it's those damn Ukrainians who want to keep on with the war.

DOUGHERTY: Exactly, I don't think that this is really anything new. The Russians have been saying this for quite a while. But there's no real action in this.

And one of the ideas, at least on the Western side, is that Russia wants to kind of freeze the conflict, make it difficult for Ukraine to move to do anything to continue this operation, pushing back against Russia. And then hopefully, somehow bring it to a close.

But I don't think that this is really very much new. What's behind it? I don't think really, at this point, very much.

VAUSE: Putin also said there would be no limit on spending for the military for the war, and that's a move which some have said will please some of the more hawkish elites in Russia. They seem to be the ones who have all the bid points (ph) out of Putin.

Last month "Newsweek" reported, "Russian elites in secret talks to get rid of Putin." The month before that, "Foreign Policy": "Can Putin's center hold? The elites used to need the Russian president. Now he needs them."

And we have this: "Russia's elites are starting to admit the possibility of defeat." That's from the Carnegie Endowment. Just a few, you know, instances of the elite, you know, being reported on in their role in all of this.

So who are the elites? And why did they have so much influence?

DOUGHERTY: You know, it's a word that, I think, is bandied around but not defined very much.

I mean, essentially, if you look at people who really understand Russia, and these are Russians who understand their government. I'd say they would -- they would probably point to two elites, one of which would be, say, the technocrats, the people who know how to do things.

The head of the central bank, Ms. Nabiuullina, who is a very astute person, who is really pretty much rescued the Russian economy. But those people, those technocrats, don't have very much influence at all right now. So the people who really do are the silliliki (ph). And the word, you

know, the root of that, "silla" (ph), means power. So these are the power people. These are the people who are in charge of the military intelligence, and operations, you know, to spies, et cetera. The security services.

[00:25:20]

And these are the people who really, as far as we know, have the greatest influence on Vladimir Putin.

Now there are a number of reasons for that. No. 1, he comes from that world. You know, he was a KGB officer. He headed the KG -- the KGB.

So he comes from that world. He also -- we have to remember in -- when they -- when he started this war, he kept it in a very closely- contained group of people, who were essentially the military. But some of the military didn't even know that this war against Ukraine was going to happen.

So his group of -- the group of people who now have any type of influence, many of them are, you know, at least as hard, if not harder, than Vladimir Putin himself.

So he's kind of in this echo chamber, from what we understand, echo chamber of people who are paranoid about the West, have conspiracy theories, and believe that Russia is surrounded by enemies.

VAUSE: That explains a lot. Jill, thanks for being with us. Good to see you again.

DOUGHERTY: OK.

VAUSE: The January 6th Committee's final report is out, and we're going through all 845 pages. We'll bring you the highlights in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:30:42]

VAUSE: Welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM.

The long-awaited, much-anticipated final report by the January 6th House Select Committee has been released, and the conclusion is blunt. The central cause of the insurrection was one man: former President Donald Trump. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.

It says Trump and his allies orchestrated an effort to overturn the 2020 election, including submitting fake electors in the state he lost. The report recommends anyone who incites an insurrection should be disqualified from holding public office.

Live now to Los Angeles, Jessica Levinson, professor of law at Loyola Law School and host of the "Passing Judgment" podcast.

Hi, Jessica. Good to see you.

JESSICA LEVINSON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, LOYOLA LAW SCHOOL: Good to hear you, John.

OK, so Donald Trump -- just let this sink in -- he's being accused of a multi-part conspiracy when he was president to overturn an election, and the accusations are backed up by more than 800 pages of what looks like credible evidence and witness testimony, often under oath.

It's a -- you know, it is a momentous day. But within all that evidence, is there a direct link between Donald Trump and the actual violence on that day on Capitol Hill?

LEVINSON: I think there is. And I think that's why, when the January 6th Committee had its final hearing on Monday, they talked about insurrection. And one of the criminal referrals was for at least aiding and abetting those who actually did storm the Capitol.

I think that, based on all the evidence, all the witnesses, all the documents they looked at, you can draw a through line between the former president and what happened at the Capitol.

And let's remember, for those who want to criticize the report, and want to say no you can't draw that through line, the evidence, the witnesses here, almost exclusively were people who wanted the former president to win. They told the truth, because they were under oath.

VAUSE: So what does the Department of Justice do now? There's never been a case like this before.

LEVINSON: There's never been a case like this before, thank goodness. Right? We don't want this to be normal.

The Department of Justice has its own parallel investigation, but they also now have an 845-page roadmap.

Now look, we all have to remember at this historic moment, that what a House select committee, a political body says, what they deem to be criminal, that's different from what the Department of Justice and prosecutors might decide.

When they decide whether or not to file charges, they're saying, we can go into a courtroom and show proof beyond a reasonable doubt that these crimes occurred.

Having said that, I think after the hearings, after the report, if the Department of Justice doesn't go forward, then they owe us a big explanation as to why. Because there really is an enormous amount of evidence here, including it's not just the insurrection, it's obstruction; it's defrauding the United States; it's making false statements of material fact. There's a lot here.

VAUSE: And earlier in the day, the select committee released transcripts of interviews with witnesses, including Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony. She worked for the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

Turns out Trump allies were paying for her lawyer, and this is what she told the committee: "He specifically told me, 'I don't want you to perjure yourself, but "I don't recall" isn't perjury. They don't know what you can and can't recall'."

Later, he allegedly told her, "The less you remember, the better." He also said to her on another occasion that, you know, it's all about protecting the boss.

When does something like that equate to obstruction of justice? And this lawyer, he was the ethics adviser to the Trump White House, which says a lot. What sort off problems are he face -- is he facing now?

LEVINSON: Irony is dead. And what we've seen is that attorneys actually are facing repercussions. So we've seen, for instance, Rudy Giuliani has faced a number of bar panels.

And when we talked about, I remember in the wake of the election litigation, you and I talked about, Would I teach this in an election law classroom, and the answer is no. I would teach this in an ethics classroom, in a legal ethics classroom as to what not to do.

So could this rise to the level of criminal behavior, when you have an internees saying, Well, don't lie, but if you want to just lie and say that you don't remember anything, that's perfectly fine.

Yes, that can be a problem for an attorney, both legally, and if they want to keep their bar card. And again, we have seen, there's referrals in this report to the House Ethics Committee, for members of Congress.

[00:35:05]

There was a discussion about whether or not some of the attorneys here needed to be referred to their state bars. Here's another example of that.

VAUSE: It's quite the legacy from the Trump administration. Jessica, thank you for being with us. Jessica Levinson there in Los Angeles.

LEVINSON: Thank you.

VAUSE: Well, the Taliban now enforcing their latest misogynistic edict. There's been global backlash and rare protest at home as Afghan women march in Kabul and elsewhere, demanding their rights to an education.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VAUSE: Rare protests have broken out across Afghanistan, with women protesting -- a small number of women, albeit, but protesting nonetheless -- against the Taliban's latest edict, which bans women from receiving a university education.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (CHANTING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: On Thursday, dozens of students and female activists marched in Kabul to protest that decision. Organizers of the protest say several people were detained by the Taliban, but later released.

Taliban justifies the ban, saying women were violating the strict dress code, and other, quote, "Islamic values." Also, the interaction between male and female students was apparently deemed (ph) a problem, as well.

[00:40:08]

Many world leaders are urging the Taliban to reverse course here. Afghanistan's former president, Ashraf Ghani, says, quote, "Unfortunately, the current problem of women's education and work in the country is very serious, sad, and the most obvious and cruel example of gender apartheid in the 21st Century."

Saudi Arabia -- yes, Saudi Arabia -- expressed surprise and regret at the decision. The king's foreign ministry calls on the Taliban to reverse the decision, which it calls "astonishing in all Islamic countries and is contrary to giving Afghan women their full legitimate rights."

The G7 called the Taliban's policy extremely disturbing, the group saying, quote, "The Taliban's actions to ban women from the public sphere will have far-reaching consequences for relations between our countries and the Taliban."

Time for a quick break. For our viewers in North America, stay with us. More news in just a moment, including the latest on that brutal winter storm. For our viewers internationally, WORLD SPORT is up next.

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[00:45:30]

VAUSE: A dangerous winter storm is moving across the U.S. right now, bringing snow and ice, frigid temperatures, and biting cold winds. More than half of the population, about 170 million people, are under some kind of winter watch or warning. States of emergency have been declared by a number of governors, now bracing for a once-in-a- generation storm.

CNN's Omar Jimenez reports from Chicago, where it's now minus four Fahrenheit, minus 20 Celsius.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's not just snow. It's wind and cold as part of a huge winter system descending onto the U.S. just days before Christmas. Over this week, more than 80 percent of the country's population will

see at or below freezing temperatures. Some places, way below, like Denver, where the temperature dropped nearly 40 degrees in just an hour, hitting negative 15 by Thursday morning.

Or, Wyoming, where a state trooper took this video, zero visibility, and temperatures 60 degrees below zero.

Elsewhere, parts of the Midwest are doing what they can to keep up.

JIMENEZ: One of the biggest concerns in a winter system like this is the roads. And this dome is part of what it takes in a city like Chicago. You're looking at 50,000 tons of salt inside that crews come in and out of over the course of the day to try and help keep these roads somewhat manageable.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): The city has about 400,000 tons of salt and more than 300 vehicles in its arsenal to fight back on this second official day of winter.

COLE STALLARD, COMMISSIONER, CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF STREETS AND SANITATION: The goal is to keep up with it, but we're going to be fighting that wind. If we could have a conversation with those young drivers, you know, every -- those first-time drivers, kids coming home from college, trying to get home, just have that conversation with those young drivers, because this is a little different kind of event.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): Cold temperatures and snow are nothing new to places like Chicago, Minneapolis, and Buffalo.

MAYOR BYRON BROWN (I), BUFFALO, NEW YORK: Some meteorologists are calling this a once-in-a-generation event.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): Even Atlanta is forecast to have wind chill in the negatives Friday.

GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R), GEORGIA: Communities across the state are about the same temperatures that they haven't experienced in a decade or more.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): The message is the same, even for places used to dealing with bad winters. It's the combination of snow, wind gusts up to 50 miles per hour, and the demand to get home for Christmas that could mean disaster, especially on the roads, where AAA estimates the majority of those traveling this holiday week will be driving.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's not like a snow day, you know, when you're a kid. It's dangerous and threatening. This is really a very serious weather alert here.

JIMENEZ: Now, you can see the snow, but you can also see me. The fear for officials here is that as this snow subsides in the overnight hours and basically just lays on the ground, looking very pretty, like it does behind me, the wind is going to turn things ugly pretty quickly, whipping around in winds that are supposed to pick up in the overnight hours, and through Friday. That, again, officials fear could reduce visibility significantly,

especially on the roads that people might be taking to try and get home for Christmas.

Omar Jimenez, CNN, Chicago.

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VAUSE: It's been quite the 180 by Beijing, after micromanaging the response to the pandemic for nearly three years now. So as top restrictions of zero-COVID coming to an end, it seems the message is to the Chinese people, you're on your own now. Good luck.

And health experts warn that the rest of the world should brace for the arrival of new variants that could prove more dangerous than the ones previous.

The warning comes as hundreds of health professionals from across the China are traveling to Beijing to assist medical centers, as an unprecedented wave of infections ripples across the country.

Eric Topol is a professor of molecular medicine, as well as the executive vice president at Scripps Research. He with us this hour from La Jolla in California.

It's been a while, Eric. Good to see you.

ERIC TOPOL, EVP, SCRIPPS RESEARCH: Good to see you, John. Happy holidays.

VAUSE: Thank you. You, too.

Now, mainland China reported zero deaths on Wednesday, zero deaths on Tuesday. In fact, for almost a month, zero deaths.

At the same time, we have CNN reporting that crematoriums are filling up, and China shifts how it counts COVID deaths. So, people are dying from COVID. But that's just being blamed on other factors. They're redefining their way out of a crisis?

TOPOL: Well, it's clear that we can't trust those numbers, as you've already basically got to, that, as you know, there's models that will predict, perhaps, a million deaths are going to occur in the next couple or few months, and it could be well more than that.

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So we're not going to know about that because, unfortunately, there's no transparency. There's no data sharing. But clearly, the country is in a crisis right now.

VAUSE: Yes. According to Bloomberg, with this headline, "China is likely seeing 1 million COVID cases, and 5,000 deaths a day."

TOPOL: Yes. VAUSE: And because we don't know exactly what's happening. Some studies have sort of estimated that the number of infections of COVID is doubling within hours, not just days, as we've seen in the past.

So this infection is rampant. And we have a country of 1.4 billion people. What -- what is the extent of this emergency, and, of course, what are the concerns beyond China's borders?

TOPOL: Right. Well, the main thing within China, of course, is that hospitalizations, they don't really have the facilities to keep up with this massive and rapid number of infections.

And then the deaths, because they don't have the people over 60 and older covered well with booster shots. The vaccines are unfortunately not that effective.

So there will be a lot of deaths. And that's why we get to that 1 million figure or higher, even.

And then as you're getting at, there's even implications outside of China, because this is, of course, a way for the variants to be nurtured. And we could see some new -- a whole family of variants, potentially. It's hopefully not the case, but it's certainly in the realm of possibility in the months ahead, from all that's happening in China right now.

VAUSE: And the mathematics is pretty simple, right? The more this virus can spread, the more chance it has of mutating. So if it's spreading this fast among so many people, then the chances of some kind of, you know, doomsday mutant virus, or variant, goes up.

TOPOL: Well, I hope we'll never see that. But the point, I guess, to add to what you just made, John, is that there are a lot of immunocompromised people in China, as -- as in the rest of the world. And when an infection occurs in one of those individuals, it can go through an accelerated mutation, an evolution, within that person's body. Then that person could infect another.

And that's basically how we think Omicron got started in Africa, over a year ago. So that's the kind of thing that we're particularly concerned about: getting a whole new family of variants beyond Omicron, like a Greek letter Pi, or Sigma, or something like that.

VAUSE: So was zero-COVID as a policy in itself flawed, and just, you know, is this -- is this proof that maybe there was a better way for China to have dealt with this?

TOPOL: No, it actually was a good policy from the standpoint of keeping infections at a -- at a remarkable low. But it was draconian, and it had all kinds of sequela on the economy, on unemployment, and all sorts of emotional hardship.

And it was necessary, John, because of the lack of the facilities to meet up with -- if the infections were to let -- to run wild.

But the problem was, coming out of the zero-COVID policy, which was necessitated because of these highly-contagious Omicron variants, and the readiness just wasn't there. They didn't have the vaccinations at the level that they should have, or the potent vaccinations.

They're just now getting, potentially, some Paxlovid as a backup for people when they do get sick, to prevent deaths and hospitalizations.

But they just haven't been prepared. They've been unwilling to import potent vaccines that are more effective against these variants. So it's just a case of just very poor preparedness, unfortunately.

VAUSE: Yes, and winter, too. Not a great time to do this. Eric, thanks.

TOPOL: All right.

VAUSE: Good to see you, take care.

Well, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on overall life expectancy in the U.S. It fell in 2021 to 76.4 years. That's nearly two and a half years less than what it was at the beginning of the pandemic and the lowest it's been for a quarter of a century since 1996.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the pandemic and drug overdoses were main contributors to the drop. However, heart disease and cancer were also factors.

The former CEO of the bankrupt crypto company FTX is now free on a $250 million bond. Sam Bankman-Fried appeared before a judge in New York Thursday. The judge agreed to a bail proposal presented by prosecutors and lawyers.

Terms include bond and electronic monitoring bracelet, and being on house arrest at home with his parents, in California.

It's Bankman-Fried's first appearance on U.S. soil since his arrest last week in the Bahamas. He's accused of stealing billions of dollars from customers of his defunct crypto trading platform.

Arraignment for those charges will happen at a later date.

Planned strikes in Europe will make holiday travel this weekend more hectic. Border force employees in the U.K. start their eight-day strike on Friday.

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The government plans to bring in trained military personnel to fill in but is warning of delays at airports and seaports are likely.

This, as a number of U.K. rail strikes have been planned this season, as well. Staff at three more train companies are set to walk off their jobs from Boxing Day. That's December 26th, for our viewers here in the United States.

And in France, French rail operator SNCF warned that all four-day strike -- a four-day strike, rather, will cause delays on its railways starting from Friday. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Imagine for a moment, a world without penguins. A new study released says that could actually happen by the end of this century.

The report says 65 percent of all the plants and animals that live in the Antarctic could be wiped out in the next 80 years, if we fail to reign in our use of fossil fuels.

The report specifically says Emperor penguins and Adelie penguins are among the most threatened species in the Antarctic. They both rely on ice shelves to nest and raise their babies.

Even a small shift in when and where those ice sheets could form, could decimate the population. The study is from a journal, "PLOS Biology."

Save the penguins.

I'm John Vause. Back in a moment with another hour of CNN NEWSROOM. See you then.

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